Bridge plans, Ignatow fail to connect

Today class, some thoughts on two personal subjects -- one much more personal than the other:

Golden gated

For almost 30 years -- often against my better judgment and despite the fact that one proposed route would have taken out an eight-acre garden my wife and I have created -- I have supported an East End bridge in Louisville. There were many factors -- and lots of studied East End opposition. I kept coming back to one thing: "Finish the loop."

This at a time when a paltry $250 million was being tossed around as a total cost for a single bridge project. That was before a downtown Interstate 65 bridge, a realignment of Spaghetti Junction and Interstate 64 somehow got tossed in as bargaining chips -- running the bill to maybe $4 billion.

At those prices, I am seriously beginning to wonder how much will ever get built -- if all the politicking, delay and rising costs will take us all back to, well, gridlock. Or was that a plan all along?

To keep the public in the loop, we had years of public meetings to vote on bridge designs. My wife and I went to at least six. We spoke, dutifully voted on the various designs in an elimination contest worthy of "American Bridge Idol."

We who went to the meetings actually began to believe in the process; our votes mattered.

Guess what? They didn't -- neither design picked by the public was the unanimous choice of a 10-member committee of Indiana and Kentucky officials.

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, a committee member, explained the vote was "most responsive to the individuals on both sides of the river." Geez, I had the mistaken belief that votes cast by people who cared enough to go to the meetings constituted a response.

The final East End design is the "minimalist" approach -- less bridge is more bridge. I'm sure that's exactly what the designers of the Golden Gate Bridge had in mind -- or the architects for our new downtown Museum Plaza.

Why be new, bold, or memorable? It's only Louisville.

That isn't sour grapes. I had some mixed feelings about the designs; just please build something.

My real complaint is if this whole public input process never really mattered, how much time and money was wasted in the charade as the costs rose into the billions? Why didn't those 10 people just lock themselves in a room two years ago and declare the winner?

God and redemption

Mel Ignatow got away with murder. I spent 18 months writing a book on the subject -- "Double Jeopardy." I interviewed about 200 people, went through 10,000 pages of documents, spoke to eight of the jurors who somehow acquitted him, spent many days with the family of Brenda Schaefer -- the woman Ignatow tied up and horribly abused before murdering her.

He planned her sadistic murder weeks in advance. Days before the murder, he dug a hole in the woods behind his girlfriend's house to hide the body. The day after the murder, he went to the Schaefer family home to sit at their table, hold hands, share in their grieving.

Aloof and arrogant, he continually lied to police, the FBI, the Schaefers. He confessed only when he had to; only served time for perjury.

Now he's back in Louisville saying God intervened to keep him from being convicted of the murder. He believes we should all forgive and forget.

Please don't do either.

Bob Hill's column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach him at (502) 582-4646 or bhill@courier-journal.com. Comment on this column, and read his blog and previous columns, at www.courier-journal.com/bobhill.

Louisville, Kentucky • Southern Indiana

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Bridge plans, Ignatow fail to connect

For almost 30 years -- often against my better judgment and despite the fact that one proposed route would have taken out an eight-acre garden my wife and I have created -- I have supported an